


Hands Battered but Hearts Survive

by paperstorm



Series: Aftermath [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Even tho I love his dumb ass, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Nile settling into her new family, No redemption for Booker in this one soz, POV Nile Freeman, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Romance, They're all gay for swords and so am I, discussions of religion, internal religious conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26031748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: Nile has never seen a palm tree up close before. She’s seen them in pictures, on t-shirts, in movies, but never right before her, tall and lush and green, casting tapered shadows over the ground she stands on. She thinks it’s magnificent. A part of her never wants to leave this beautiful place. Another part wants to see everything, everywhere.//Following the events of the movie, Nile, Andy, Joe, and Nicky head to a safehouse in Brazil, where Nile learns to sword-fight, the true extent of how much Nicky and Joe love each other, and how to belong in her new family.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Aftermath [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965853
Comments: 119
Kudos: 831





	Hands Battered but Hearts Survive

Nile has never seen a palm tree up close before.  
  
She’s seen them in pictures, on t-shirts, in movies, but never right before her, tall and lush and green, casting tapered shadows over the ground she stands on. She thinks it’s magnificent. A part of her never wants to leave this beautiful place. Another part wants to see everything, everywhere.  
  
She can’t remember the name of the town they’re near, hiding out in what can only really be described as a shack – although relatively roomy and well-equipped, as far as shacks with tin roofs and peeling blue paint go – on the banks of a slow, brown river. She hadn’t recognized it, when Andy said it, so it didn’t stick in her memory. Brazil, that much she knows. They’re in Brazil. The safehouse outside Paris isn’t safe anymore, but if Nile had given it any thought, she would have come to the correct conclusion that these people must have dozens of safehouses, in dozens of countries, in case one is compromised or in case they need to get away from the Western world and its powers of surveillance for a while. At least until the death of a big pharma CEO can be officially ruled a suicide, and investigators in London can make whatever the hell they’re going to make out of an entire building full of lifeless bodies. It still makes Nile a little sick to her stomach to think about it, so she tries not to.  
  
It’s just her and Andy, for now. For how long exactly, Nile isn’t sure. Booker’s been banished. Nicky and Joe are in Malta, Andy says, and for how long, Nile doesn’t know that either. _They need time_ , Andy says, in her frustratingly cryptic way. Getting a solid answer out of her is like picking at a popcorn kernel lodged deep under the gum of a second molar.  
  
But it’s beautiful, here. It’s nothing like Chicago, or Kabul. Her childhood was skinned knees on scorching pavement, leaky pipes that banged in the night, riding the L train downtown with her friends on the weekends. Afghanistan was sand, and crumbling clay houses, and desperate people. This place is more peaceful than anywhere Nile has ever been in her entire life. The rainforest seems to breathe, moving in tandem with warm, humid breezes, alive in a way that skyscrapers never could be. The trees tower above them, dwarfing the small house where they stay, protecting them from drones or satellites or Google Earth. Nile is fairly certain the cover of foliage above them is so thick, no one would ever know this place was here unless they already knew it.  
  
“Did I lose you?”  
  
Nile looks up. The weapon in Andy’s hand is hanging loosely by her side. Sweat plasters her short hair to her forehead. Her other hand is on her hip, and her eyebrows are raised, somewhere halfway between exasperated and fond. _Fond_ , Nile thinks again. This person likes her. This person is helping her master the art of sword-fighting, so that her battle axe can be passed down once she leaves them. It creates a confusing swirl of emotions in Nile’s gut.  
  
“What the hell are the rest of us supposed to do, without you?”  
  
The axe falls to the ground, landing in the dirt with a soft thud. Andy stretches her shoulders, crossing one arm across her chest and pulling on it with the opposite hand, and then reversing the position to stretch the other side. “I’m not on my deathbed, kid. You aren’t rid of me just yet.”  
  
“But it’ll happen.”  
  
With a slow exhale, she looks at Nile. Her lips press together for a moment, but there’s no sadness in her eyes. “Yeah. It will.”  
  
It’s all she offers, and it does nothing to quell the quiet hurricane brewing in Nile. “Andy,” she implores, as the older woman squats down and lets herself land on her ass in the dirt, brushing her hands together to clean them.  
  
When she looks up, her expression is tired, but there is a smile on her face. “I am thousands of years old. I have seen more and done more than anyone is supposed to. If it’s my time, then it’s my time, and it’s okay. We are a family, we always have been. We lose members, and we gain new ones, but we’re always a family, and that doesn’t change once I’m gone. Nicky and Joe will take care of you. They’re much better people than I am anyway.”  
  
“What about Booker?”  
  
“Just because they don’t wanna see him, doesn’t mean you can’t. You’re your own person.”  
  
Nile breathes. The air around them is so humid, and it reminds her of sticky summers in Chicago. It reminds her, as nearly everything seems to despite her best efforts to keep control of her wandering mind, that she can never go back there. She sits next to Andy, crossing her legs underneath her and folding her fingers together, squeezing to keep from reaching for the cross around her neck purely out of habit.  
  
“When will they be here?” she asks.  
  
“Soon,” Andy says, noncommittally.  
  
“Soon like, a week?” Nile presses. “A month, a year?”  
  
“Somewhere between a week and a month, if I had to guess. They’re not abandoning us. They just need some time. To process everything that happened. The pain of almost having lost each other.” Andy stretches her legs out in front of her and leans back, resting her weight on her palms. “Booker was right, you know. The two of them … they don’t know how it feels to be alone. They’re more scared than anyone of finding out.”  
  
“What’s so special about Malta?” Nile squeezes her fingers together tighter, until the skin starts losing its color.  
  
“I think a lot of things.”  
  
“You know, you’re annoyingly bad at actually answering questions.”  
  
Andy laughs loudly, tossing her head back. “What do you want me to say?” she asks, still chuckling. “I don’t know exactly why it’s special. Maybe they had particularly earth-shattering sex there once, I have no idea. I just know it means something to them.”  
  
“Is it stupid that I miss them already?”  
  
“No, it’s not stupid. I always miss them, when we’re apart.”  
  
“Then why are you ever apart?”  
  
“We’re easier to track, if we’re always together.”  
  
“Joe and Nicky are always together.”  
  
“Yeah, well. You try telling them they have to spend a year apart for their own safety.” Andy sits back upright, and then pushes up easily to her feet. She goes back for her axe, picking it up and looking to Nile. “C’mon. We’ve got another hour before the sun goes down.”  
  
* * *  
  
She dreams of Quynh again, but doesn’t tell anybody this time. There’s no one around to tell. She has her own room, this time. Andy’s been sleeping in the adjacent room, and the walls are thin but not so thin that she would have heard Nile’s quiet gasp as she awoke with a start. The emotions ricocheting inside her are intense and violent and not her own, and there’s a detached horror in it, like choking on second-hand smoke.  
  
Her hand goes to her neck, as she settles back against the pillow. She feels the spot where a long, ugly scar should be, but isn’t. Her fingers find the cross instead. A symbol that, she’s sure, was waved around like a flag as a woman was locked in an iron coffin and tossed forever to the bottom of the ocean. As if the God she was taught loved all his creations could have sanctioned something so evil.  
  
It’s a long time before she falls back to sleep.  
  
* * *  
  
Andy is a terrible cook. Nile doesn’t understand how that’s possible, after thousands of years, but she can’t even make a decent grilled cheese sandwich without the edges burnt and the cheese still hard and cold in the middle.  
  
“Wait until Nicky gets here,” Andy says, laughing at herself as she tosses the ruined sandwiches into the trash and hands the still-warm frying pan to Nile. “He doesn’t even need groceries, he can wander off into the woods for 20 minutes and an hour later there’s a gourmet meal on the table.”  
  
“To be fair, I could make a grilled cheese when I was like eight years old.”  
  
“You handle it, then. I’ll clean up.”  
  
“Deal.” Nile drags the knife through the block of cheese Andy had brought home from a market miles away. As she places the slices onto buttered bread, Andy sits at the small kitchen table and reaches behind herself to massage the back of her neck.  
  
“Sore muscles never used to last,” she says. “This kinda blows.”  
  
It’s too overwhelming, to consider how much longer they might have Andy with them, so Nile changes the subject. “Tell me about Rodin.”  
  
“What do you wanna know?”  
  
“What was he like?”  
  
“Pompous,” Andy answers. After a moment, she adds, “talented.”  
  
“We went to the museum in Philly, for my 18th birthday.” Nile places the sandwiches in the pan and the butter instantly sizzles, so she lowers the temperature of the element. The stove has to be a hundred years old. She’s never seen one this ancient, and she grew up in a poor neighborhood so that’s saying a lot. “My mom scrimped and saved for months to afford it. She knew how much I wanted it.”  
  
“That was nice of her.”  
  
“You didn’t really sleep with him, did you?”  
  
Andy snorts. “No. He was too busy sleeping with all his students. And his beard was gross.”  
  
“How many other famous people did you know?”  
  
“Lots. Too many to remember.”  
  
Nile longs to know more, but pushes her questions away for later. She flips the sandwiches, and lets the renewed sizzle distract her for the time being.  
  
* * *  
  
They’ve been alone together for only nine days when Nicky and Joe show up.  
  
They’re sitting inside, Nile on the couch watching a soap opera on the tiny, possibly prehistoric television and not understanding a single word since it’s uncaptioned and in Portuguese, and Andy at the kitchen table whittling a stick into a shiv probably for no other reason than boredom, when the door crashes open. They both jump, Nile nearly out of her skin, and Andy springs to her feet with the primitive weapon at the ready, but instead of danger, it’s Joe bounding into the house, with his arms spread wide and Nicky’s face peering over his shoulder.  
  
“My girls!” he shouts.  
  
“ _Fuck_ you,” Andy breathes, dropping the shiv onto the table and rushing over to leap into his arms anyway, even as she curses him out. “Thought we were under fucking attack, you couldn’t have made a more delicate entrance?”  
  
“I don’t do anything delicate, Boss, you know that,” Joe says, his arms wrapping around her tightly enough to lift her briefly off her feet.  
  
“I wish I didn’t,” Andy complains, but she’s grinning from ear to ear when he lets her go. Nile has never seen her smile like that. Joe moves out of the way so Andy can hug Nicky, much less forcefully but far longer. “Hi, gorgeous,” she says to him softly, and he replies, “we missed you.”  
  
Joe is on Nile before she’s even fully standing, enveloping her in the biggest, warmest hug she’s received in months. She feels herself melting into it, against his chest, swaddled and cared for and at peace again when only moments ago her heart had been beating out of her chest. “We missed you, too,” he tells her, rocking her back and forth playfully.  
  
Over by the door, she can hear Andy quietly asking, “you good?” and Nicky answering, “we’re good.”  
  
* * *  
  
Andy’s right, about Nicky’s cooking. He sets almost immediately upon their arrival to raiding the cupboards for spices and jarred tomatoes and fresh herbs Nile doesn’t know where he locates. She’s at the wooden table watching him, as he chops and stirs and hums idly to himself. When Joe wanders into the room, Nicky waves him over without looking up from his work, sensing Joe’s presence.  
  
“Taste this,” he says, holding up a wooden spoon and bringing it to Joe’s lips.  
  
Joe lets himself be fed a mouthful of sauce and he groans, dropping his head back dramatically. “Delizioso!” he cries.  
  
“It doesn’t need more salt?”  
  
“If you change a single thing, I’m leaving you.”  
  
Nicky elbows him in the ribs, and Joe laughs brightly.  
  
“Joking, joking,” he concedes, wrapping his arms around Nicky’s waist from behind and resting his chin on Nicky’s shoulder, staying plastered to him while he goes back to stirring. It’s far too hot for snuggling, especially over a hot stove, Nile thinks, but it doesn’t seem to deter them.  
  
Joe says something else, close to Nicky’s ear, that Nile can’t quite pick up. She catches a few words in Arabic that she recognizes, but many more than she doesn’t. She can somewhat guess as to the general meaning, though, since Nicky smiles at Joe over his shoulder, his blue eyes sparkling as they only seem to when he looks at Joe. He takes Joe’s cheek into his hand and presses a soft kiss to his lips, and suddenly Nile feels like she’s intruding on a private moment, even though they’re standing right in front of her and they’re very well aware that she’s in the room.  
  
“Quit slobbering on my dinner,” Andy says, as she comes in from outside.  
  
Joe chuckles, but he listens, and releases Nicky back to his sauce. He sits, next to Nile at the table, and Andy falls heavily into the chair across from them.  
  
“So?” she asks, resting her forearms on the table. “Malta was good?”  
  
“Malta’s always good,” Joe answers, eyes twinkling.  
  
Andy laughs, but reaches across the table to smack him lightly on the back of his hand. “Not in front of the new kid. Not without even asking whether she’s okay with you two all over each other.”  
  
“I am,” Nile pipes up, “for the record. Although maybe don’t need a play-by-play, since we kinda just met.”  
  
“You’ll get used to it,” Andy tells her. “You’ll have to, they’re unstoppable.”  
  
Across the kitchen, Nicky leans back against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest, his cheeks bright pink but his mouth grinning. “He can behave, if he tries.”  
  
He shares a look with Joe, and then Joe looks back to Andy with a more somber expression than before. “You know. We still went through what we went through. We all did. We talked, we cried, the whole nine. It was a grand old time.”  
  
Andy nods. A shadow of seriousness passes over her face, almost gone before Nile can notice it, but not quite. Andy understands, like no one on earth does, what they’re so scared of. What could have become their fate, if they’d never made it out of that lab. Nile can barely fathom it, no matter how hard she tries. It’s too big. It’s like conceptualizing the universe.  
  
The pasta Nicky puts in front of her a few minutes later is one of the best meals Nile has ever had in her life. And around a table, sharing food and laughter with three people she knows care for her, even though it’s new, is a balm on her soul that she didn’t know she needed so badly.  
  
* * *  
  
On her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, she passes by the open door of the bedroom Joe and Nicky are sharing, and catches a glimpse of them. They’re on top of the sheets and shirtless, since it’s warm, but again the heat isn’t stopping them from being wrapped up in each other. Nicky must hardly be able to breathe, with his face buried in Joe’s neck, and Joe’s arms are around his back, one hand squeezed around his own wrist. Even in sleep, he’s keeping Nicky safe. Shielding him from whatever might be coming to harm them, even if it’s nothing. Nile allows herself a moment to hover in the doorway and just look at them. Her father died when she was so young, she remembers her parents loving each other but not as vividly as she wishes she could.  
  
* * *  
  
The other half of her new family joins in fight training in the morning. Joe comes out of the house in a backwards ballcap with his curls sticking out of the sides and a curved scimitar in his hand, with all the enthusiasm of a puppy on its way to the park. Nicky is behind him, with a straighter sword, one that looks right out of tales of King Arthur and his knights. They start sparring before Andy appears, their swords loud as they crash into each other. Nile watches, captivated. The way they move is so fluid, so effortless, almost like it’s a ballet only noisier and more potentially violent. Joe’s movements are more jarring and Nicky’s smoother, but equally lethal, were they really trying to hurt each other.  
  
Nile longs to know so many things about them. How many times they killed each other, how long it took before they understood that neither could die. Why they decided to take off together, leaving the war and their lives behind them. How long it took before they could understand each other's languages. Before they unlearned the things they had been told. Before Joe forgave Nicky for the siege of his home. Before they began to enjoy each other’s company. Before cold nights in a shared tent turned to holding each other like they had been last night, when she’d seen them.  
  
Nicky spins, quick and agile, and his sword slices through the air and stops, just a hair short of making contact with Joe’s neck. For a moment their eyes are locked, fire and intensity vibrating between them, and then Joe makes a show of pretending to die, crying out exaggeratedly and falling, limbs flailing, down to the ground.  
  
“Blehhhh,” he groans, miming losing his guts, and then dramatically goes limp.  
  
Nicky snorts as he laughs, and fondly calls Joe an idiot.  
  
Nile’s fingers gravitate to her own neck, but the memory of dying doesn’t fill her veins with ice like it did a week ago. She’s becoming accustomed to the idea of being immortal. Settling into the powerful, fearless feeling of it.  
  
Then Andy emerges from the house, and the feeling fades a little.  
  
“Aw, shit, Joe’s dead,” she deadpans, and Joe snickers and hops up.  
  
“Et tu, Brute?” he jokes, pointing accusingly at Nicky.  
  
“ _Tell_ me you didn’t know Julius Caesar,” Nile says, still unable to wrap her mind around how long they’ve been alive, and how prolific their lives have been.  
  
“No. We knew Shakespeare, though,” Joe answers, as Nicky slides his arms around Joe’s waist and kisses his cheek in apology.  
  
“Don’t tell me he was horrible.”  
  
Nicky looks at her, an eyebrow raised in question.  
  
“Andy said Rodin was pompous. I don’t wanna know about famous historical figures actually being assholes.”  
  
“All men are assholes,” Andy muses, grinning when Joe makes a hurt noise, and amending, “fine, most. Now get over here, and if I catch you pulling punches because I’m not immortal anymore, I _will_ stab you.”  
  
“Aye-aye, Captain.” Joe salutes her and then picks up his sword from where he dropped it theatrically minutes earlier.  
  
Nicky turns to Nile with eyebrows raised in question, and she nods, tightly holding the grip of the blade Andy had procured for her with both hands. “I’m not so good at this, yet.”  
  
“How long have you been practicing?”  
  
“A few days.”  
  
“I have been practicing for over 900 years,” Nicky says, smiling kindly. “You will improve.”  
  
“I’d rather just use a gun.”  
  
“A gun is not always available.” Nicky moves closer to her, setting his sword down and putting his hands over hers. “Lighter, on the grip. It should feel like an extension of your arm.”  
  
She lets him help her readjust her hold, finding it more natural once he nods approvingly.  
  
* * *  
  
Nile surprises them with her poker skills, in the evening when Joe breaks out a pack of cards and they sit around the table with an old radio on in the background. The nights were long and boring, sometimes, when she was stationed overseas, and she took a considerable amount of money off all her commanding officers in the months she was there. _It’s that baby face_ , one of them had complained, _you never think it’s lying to you until it is._  
  
The four of them aren’t playing for money, although unofficially they’re playing for whoever has to do the massive pile of dishes in the sink that Nicky left after whipping up a casserole from seemingly nowhere. He was humming, again, while chopping vegetables, and there was something so warm and homey about it so Nile had just sat on the floor in front of the refrigerator and talked to him and Joe.  
  
“She’s bluffing,” Andy says, leaning over on one elbow and looking at Nile with narrowed eyes.  
  
“You think?” Joe asks.  
  
“I’m not so sure.” Nicky’s eyes narrow as well, all three of them trying to size her up.  
  
“She’s definitely bluffing.”  
  
“There is always that possibility,” Nile says, slow and even, training her expression carefully. Of any of them, she thinks Nicky is the one who might see through her. He pays such close attention, he has a good read of everybody. So she avoids his gaze, but not so much as it make it look like that’s what she’s doing.  
  
Andy tosses a small pile of pebbles onto the pile of them already in the middle of the table – they didn’t have any poker chips, so they improvised and raided the riverbed. “All in.”  
  
Joe adds his pebbles as well. “Me too.”  
  
Nicky hesitates, and then shakes his head and puts his hand down. “Out.”  
  
Nile spreads her cards slowly out on the table in front of her. “Full house.”  
  
“Damn it!” Andy shouts, as Joe cracks up and claps his hands together.  
  
“We got a new champion,” he cheers, grabbing Nile by the shoulder and jostling her. Nile laughs, and Andy loudly shoves her chair back with another swear and stomps over to the sink.  
  
* * *  
  
It’s after midnight, by the time Andy’s putting the last of the dishes back into the cupboards, the process sped along because Nicky felt bad and helped. Now she’s back at the table, with her feet up on it, crossed at the ankle. Nile is next to her, looking through old pictures on her phone. She can’t see her family again. She understands that. By now, they’ve been told she was killed in combat, probably given a coffin to bury in the military cemetery, and it would only terrify and devastate them if she turned up on her mother’s doorstep. But she can hold onto them this way. She can remember the way her brother smelled, as she looks at pictures of them two of them from years ago. She can remember the Prince songs her mom used to sing to her when she was little and kept awake by a thunderstorm.  
  
Nicky and Joe are on the tattered green couch, on the other side of the room. The T.V. is on, but muted, and it casts blue and purple shadows over them in the darkness. Joe is reclined against the arm and Nicky is between his legs, back to front, his forehead pressed against Joe’s bearded jaw. They aren’t asleep, even though their eyes are closed. She can tell by the way Joe’s fingers are petting absently over Nicky’s stomach and Nicky is smiling.  
  
“Have they always been like that?” Nile asks Andy, quietly enough that they won’t be able to hear her.  
  
Andy looks up, and then follows Nile’s eyeline across the room. “Like what?”  
  
“Just …” Nile gestures vaguely at them. It’s inconceivable, to her, that Andy isn’t seeing what she’s seeing. The effect has worn off after so many centuries, she supposes, but it seems impossible to ever not be enchanted by them.  
  
“Oh.” Andy presses her lips together, and a hint of a smile crosses over her face as she looks at them. Nicky nuzzles his nose into Joe’s beard and Joe’s arms tighten around his middle. “Yeah, they have. Since I’ve known them, anyway.”  
  
“It must have been hard, for Booker. To watch them.” She’s wary, of saying things like that, because she’s known these people such a short time and they’ve known each other longer than she can fathom. But she misses him, even if maybe she shouldn’t.  
  
Andy is silent, for a long moment. Before she answers, she lifts her feet down off the table and plants them back on the floor. “I’m sure it was.”  
  
“What about you?”  
  
“Maybe I’ve had a lot longer to get used to being alone.”  
  
“You know they’re never gonna let you out of their sight again, right? The only reason they took off to Malta in the first place is because they knew I was here with you.” Nile looks at her, in time to see Andy roll her eyes and huff through her nose.  
  
“You’re probably right.”  
  
“So, it’s us, now. This family, like you said. Until …”  
  
“Yeah.” Andy nods. “Until.”  
  
On the other side of the room, a male voice murmurs softly. Joe whispers something into Nicky’s forehead, and Nicky smiles wider and responds. Like before, Nile recognizes words, but only a few. She was never fluent in Arabic, but was around it enough to know some of what they said definitely wasn’t it.  
  
“What language are they speaking?”  
  
“Theirs,” Andy answers, with another small smile, aimed down at her folded hands.  
  
Nile’s eyes widen. “They have their own language?”  
  
“As far as I can tell, it’s a mix of ancient Arabic and a regional dialect from Genoa that doesn’t exist anymore. I doubt anyone alive could understand it other than them.”  
  
Nile looks back at them, and exhales slowly. “Whoa.”  
  
Nicky, cuddled in the warm haven of Joe’s arms, whispers words Nile does understand. “Ti amo.”  
  
* * *  
  
She dreams about Booker. Not in a way that feels like a premonition, not in a way that feels like their heads are connected and he’s simultaneously dreaming of her, just a normal dream. They’re at a circus, and there’s a pink spotted elephant, and Booker really wants to try his hand at being a trapeze artist because it doesn’t matter if he falls, and he doesn’t take no for an answer when the ringmaster says he isn’t allowed.  
  
* * *  
  
Joe is whisking eggs in the shirt Nicky had been wearing yesterday, when Nile emerges from her room in the morning. Judging by the broken shells piled on the counter, they aren’t chicken eggs, and Nile doesn’t ask because she really doesn’t want to know.  
  
“Morning, sunshine,” Joe says, smiling cheerily at her. From another’s mouth, it might have sounded sarcastic. From Joe, she knows it isn’t. He’s told her, multiple times, that she’s like the sun.  
  
“Smells good,” she tells him, referring to some kind of meat crackling in a skillet. “Don’t tell me what it is or I might hurl, but it smells good.”  
  
“I’m not quite the wizard in the kitchen that Nicky is, but I can handle breakfast.”  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
“Outside.” Joe nods toward the back of the house, in the direction of the river.  
  
Nile nods and leaves him to his cooking. She brushes her teeth and washes her face, and pulls her braids into a ponytail so they’re off her neck in the heat. Andy is still asleep, passed out ungracefully on the couch, face down and drooling. Nile bites her tongue to keep from giggling as she walks past. Once she’s dressed, she wanders out back, spotting Nicky sitting on the riverbank, his legs tucked up underneath him. As she approaches, she notices his head is bowed.  
  
“Are you praying?” Nile asks, quietly, not wanting to disturb him if he is.  
  
Nicky doesn’t answer for a moment, but then his lips curve into a smile and he cracks open one up to squint up at her. “In a way. Just finished.”  
  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to – ”  
  
Nicky shakes his head, and gestures to the spot beside him in the grass. “Please.”  
  
Nile sits, staring out at the water before them and the lush expanse of green on the other side. “Andy says you were a priest.”  
  
“I was. Not for very long, compared to all the years I’ve lived since then.”  
  
“Why did you leave it?”  
  
“Because I believed our crusade to be God’s will. I was taught that a barbarous people had stolen our Lord’s land from him, and that he needed an army to retrieve it. I thought it was my calling, that it was Holy.”  
  
“A priest can’t pick up a sword?” Nile asks, to cover for the way the shadows on his face have a lump building in her throat. He doesn’t joke about their first meeting, the way Joe does. She’s picked up on that. Nicky just looks sad when he thinks about it, like he still hasn’t forgiven himself, all these centuries later.  
  
“It would have been unusual.”  
  
Almost without noticing it, fully ingrained in her like a nail-biting habit, she reaches for the cross at her neck and pinches it between her thumb and forefinger. She’s resisted it, in front of Andy, since the airplane. Now, she feels it on her skin, the ridges of it, the smoothness of the metal. It’s always been comforting. A reminder that she wasn’t alone. In this moment, it feels fraught with contradiction.  
  
When she looks back at him, she sees Nicky watching her with his intense, piercing eyes. She was right, in thinking he sees through her in a way the others don’t. Embarrassed, she drops the cross and lets her hand fall back to her lap.  
  
Nicky doesn’t speak. He waits, endlessly kind and patient. Nile chews at her lower lip, and eventually tells him, “Andy says God doesn’t exist.”  
  
“Faith does not require proof.”  
  
“Do you think she’s wrong?”  
  
“I don’t think what someone else believes has to dictate what you believe.”  
  
“It isn’t supposed to be possible. This, us. What we are. If I went back to my church, and showed them my skin pushing a bullet back out and sealing itself back up … I guess they might say I’m a miracle.”  
  
“But they might not,” Nicky finishes, understandingly.  
  
Nile nods, and clenches her molars together. “Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it.” She thought she knew so many things. She hasn’t worked out, yet, how to reorganize the world in her mind. New information still feels sometimes like puzzle pieces that just won’t fit. “They locked up Quynh. And they used my God as justification.”  
  
“God is not the same as religion, Nile,” Nicky says. His accent is melodic, and comforting. “Religion was made by us, by people. You do not need it to believe in something larger than this world. The power I believe in now would never have wanted me to hate my Joe. So I have to think the one I believed in back then did not want that either. We just misunderstood.”  
  
Nile nods, and considers it. She’s never thought about it quite that way. “So it’s alright if I still believe?”  
  
“Of course it is.”  
  
“Do you? Does Joe?”  
  
“Not in the same way, that we once did. The world has changed, we have changed.” The way he says it is pensive, quiet and thoughtful like he often is, and guarded. Nile longs for so much more information than any of them seem particularly willing to offer, at least without considerable prodding, and she’s wary of prodding too much. But aches, down to the marrow of her bones, to know everything.  
  
“But you still pray.”  
  
“In a way,” he says again, and Nile thinks he isn’t going to elaborate and she’ll be left wondering again, but instead he continues. “It is not so ritualistic anymore, but it feels important to let the universe know I am appreciative for what I have. I thank it for bringing me Joe, for Andy, for you. I ask it to keep my family safe. Just now I was asking it to watch over Booker.”  
  
Nile nods again. They fall silent for a moment, and Nicky reaches over and squeezes her shoulder briefly before letting his hand fall away. A warm breeze picks up, rustling noisily through the trees, and a brilliantly green frog hops on the pebbles near Nile’s foot. Nicky’s hair moves in the wind, the strands playing over his forehead.  
  
“How long is Joe going to be mad at him?”  
  
“Joe is terrified of Andy’s fate; ripped away from one she loves and living for centuries with the guilt and the loss and the heartache.” Nicky stares forward, and when Nile glances over at him, his brow is furrowed and his eyes have darkened. “When we were in that lab … we were tied down. Helpless. They hurt him and I couldn’t stop it. That happened because Booker lied to us.”  
  
“Are you mad at him, too?”  
  
“Yes,” Nicky says immediately, with a serious nod, but just as quickly, he softens again, and looks more like the person Nile thinks she knows. It’s a glimpse, though, into his fire. He’s gentle and sweet, but she would not want to be on the other side of his anger. “But I hurt, for him. For his loneliness. And a century is a long time, to stay angry.”  
  
Andy’s voice hollers at them from an open window in the house, calling them in for breakfast. Nicky stands, and reaches down to pull Nile to her feet. Once she’s upright, she takes advantage of their proximity to pull Nicky into a hug. He hugs her back right away, one arm around her back and the other cupping the back of her head, like Nile had seen him do to Andy the first night he and Joe arrived.  
  
“Thank you,” she says sincerely, and he squeezes her a little tighter.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“I miss my family,” Nile continues, “but if I have to have a new one, I’m happy it’s this one.”  
  
Nicky keeps his arm around her as they walk back toward the house, and Andy points at them and calls, “Joey, the new kid has her hands all over your man.”  
  
Joe’s head appears cartoonishly around the corner, like a groundhog popping up out of a hole.  
  
Nicky lets go of her and goes to him, taking Joe’s cheeks in his hands and kissing his forehead. “Amore mio.”  
  
“Hayati,” Joe answers, arms draping over Nicky’s shoulders.  
  
Nile grabs a mug from the sagging cupboard and pours herself some coffee, giggling as Andy pretends to gag behind them. “I am not interested in your man, just so we’re clear.”  
  
Joe raises his eyebrows and pretends to be offended. “And why not?”  
  
“Too old,” Nile cracks, and Nicky and Andy laugh.  
  
* * *  
  
Nile goes for a run, in the morning. It’s still humid, but its summer in a literal jungle so she figures it’s never not going to be humid. The ground is soft under her feet as her shoes pound along the worn path, through thatches of trees taller than buildings and a thick overhang of leaves and vines that at least block out the worst of the dazzling sun. It’s meditative, just putting one foot in front of the other, focusing on her breathing, letting the sound of blood pumping in her ears drown out all other thoughts.  
  
She’s panting by the time the path reconnects with the river, and she comes to a halt, bending over to rest her hands on her knees and struggling to catch her breath. When she looks up, her heart leaps into her throat and she freezes. Across the river, approaching its edge in slow, smooth movements, is a massive spotted jaguar.  
  
Slowly, with her heart thundering against her ribs, Nile lowers herself down. She sits, keeping her hands visible, believing somehow the animal might panic if it looks like she’s reaching for a weapon, even though that’s likely absurd. Her stillness, though, seems to do the trick. The animal sees her, staring at her intensely with glowing yellow eyes, but it resumes its path toward the river. The muscles in its shoulders flex intimidatingly as it lowers its head and drinks, a large pink tongue lapping at the still water.  
  
Nile is struck to her core by the beauty of it, strange and quiet and majestic. It doesn’t need to make noise, to put on a show, to communicate its power. The uncontested top of the food chain. The animal licks its lips and then looks back at her. Something intangible passes between them, something like understanding, or a sense of kinship. She, too, is wandering the jungle alone, unafraid of predators. For her, it’s a new feeling. For the cat, it’s as old as time.  
  
It moves suddenly, turning, and with a flick of a thick tail, it’s gone, disappearing back into the brush. Nile stays for a long time, frozen on the riverbank, feeling all at once more alone than she ever has, but at the same time, like Nicky was right. She is part of something much bigger. She’s only a piece of it, but every piece matters.  
  
* * *  
  
When she returns, Nicky and Joe are outside. She doesn’t mean to spy on them, but she can’t help it. They’re too captivating sometimes. She stays just for a moment in the shadows of the trees, watching in wonder as Joe takes Nicky’s hand and leans down to kiss it, and Nicky smiles at him, so loving it takes her breath away a little.  
  
“My only regret,” Joe is saying, as he straightens up and his arms go around Nicky’s waist, “is that I didn’t get to end that little maggot myself.”  
  
Nicky laughs quietly. One arm drapes over Joe’s shoulder, and the other smooths over his hair, fingers tangling in the curls for a moment before it settles around the back of Joe’s neck. He says something too softly for Nile to hear, and Joe tips forward to bump their foreheads together.  
  
“He hurt you, I had to,” Joe says.  
  
“Sono qui,” Nicky answers, both hands coming up to cup Joe’s cheeks. “I’m here. Always.”  
  
They kiss, as gentle and tender as Nile’s ever seen in person, and her cheeks burn in the shame of watching them suddenly, feeling far more voyeuristic than it had a moment ago. She makes more noise than necessary with her feet to announce her presence as she approaches, and they both look up and smile at her, but make no move to separate. They’re still holding each other in the weeds as Nile enters the house and heads for the shower.  
  
* * *  
  
The clang of metal roughly hitting metal is loud in the still air around them, as her sword connects with Nicky’s and the blades slide together. His eyes, intense and piercing at the best of times, bore into her as he tracks her every movement like a falcon tracking a helpless mouse.  
  
Nile doesn’t back down. She’s spent her life being underestimated, and proving doubters wrong.  
  
She lunges, footwork quick and precise like Andy had shown her earlier in the week. Her sword jabs forward and finds nothing but empty space as Nicky twists and spins out of the way. Brandishing his own weapon, his knees bend into an attack stance. Nile watches a bead of sweat near his temple form into a drop that slides down his cheek.  
  
For a moment time slows down. She’s enveloped by her surroundings, by the tropical air and the canopy of trees above and the warm dirt beneath her bare feet. When she strikes, it’s exact and single-minded. She fakes to the right, ducking out of the way of his flying sword, and uses her knee, in a lightening-quick motion, to knock it right from his hand. It clatters to the dirt, and she stands tall in triumph, the tip of her blade pressed lightly, but threatening nonetheless, into the center of Nicky’s chest.  
  
Nobody moves for the space of a few skips of her racing heartbeat, and then Andy shouts, “Yes!” at the absolute top of her lungs.  
  
Nile’s shoulders heave as breath is drawn quick into her lungs. Nicky’s panting as well, and he raises his hands in surrender, but the smile on his face could light up an entire football field.  
  
Joe’s laugh is loud and wild, a joyful shriek that echoes through the jungle around them, and half a second later his arms are wrapping around her waist from behind. He picks her right up off the ground and spins her around. Nile screams happily, her sword falling to the ground next to Nicky’s.  
  
“She picked up a sword a _week_ ago, Nicky,” Andy is crowing. “How long did you train to become a knight?”  
  
“A lot longer than that,” Nicky admits with a laugh.  
  
When Joe finally stops spinning her, she’s dizzy, and Andy bounds over to her for a high-five.  
  
“ _Hell_ yeah,” she says emphatically. “That’s my girl.”  
  
Nicky holds his hand out to shake hers, gracious in defeat and still grinning. “I am proud of you,” he says, his voice overflowing with sincerity.  
  
Nile smiles until her cheeks ache.  
  
* * *  
  
In her room after the sun has set, Nile lays back against the lumpy pillows and scrolls again through her camera role. Her in her graduation cap and gown, ice cream cones at Navy Pier with her best high-school friend, a camping trip last July, just before she shipped out. Her smiling face looking back at her barely seems like her own. Like she doesn’t know the person in these pictures anymore. Like she really did die in a hut in Afghanistan, and is someone else now.  
  
A soft knock on her halfway open door makes her look up, and Joe is leaning against the door-jam, frowning at her. “You okay?”  
  
“Yeah, why?”  
  
“I was walking by, you look a bit down.”  
  
“Oh.” She shrugs, unsure of how to explain exactly what she’s feeling at any given moment, and he comes into the room and sits at the end of her bed. She leans over, holding her phone out, to show him.  
  
Joe takes it, looking at the picture she’d left it on and zooming in with his fingers. “This is your mom?”  
  
Nile nods.  
  
“She’s beautiful.”  
  
“She’s amazing,” Nile replies, and then the rest of what she’d meant to say gets caught in her throat.  
  
Joe notices, but pretends he doesn’t and lets her compose herself.  
  
“How long are we gonna stay here?” she asks, when she can speak again without tears threatening.  
  
Joe hands her phone back, and shrugs one shoulder. “Not sure. Until we wanna leave, I guess.”  
  
“Where do we go next?”  
  
“Don’t know that either.”  
  
“What do you usually do, after a mission wraps?”  
  
“This, more or less. Find a safe place, hang out for a bit. Go our separate ways eventually, until the next one. We’re never apart for long.”  
  
“But not this time.”  
  
He looks at her, and shakes his head. “No, not this time. Not while we still have Andy.”  
  
Outside the room, Andy passes by, and then doubles back, looking at them with a curious tilt of her head.  
  
“Family bonding time,” Joe says, holding out his hand. “In you get, Boss.”  
  
Andy purses her lips, but then grins. “Nicky!” she shouts over her shoulder, “it’s group cuddle time.”  
  
She flops down unceremoniously on Nile’s other side, and slings an arm over her. Nicky appears in the doorway after only seconds, bright-eyed and laughing as he descends onto them and they tip over into a messy pile on Nile’s bed, limbs tangled together, her head ending up on Joe’s chest and more than two arms wrapped tightly around her. A sense of belonging fills her, expanding in her chest like a balloon, as the three of them laugh and bicker and Nile just floats between them and soaks it up.  
  
Her phone falls, temporarily forgotten – or maybe just superseded by something equally as important – to the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I am not POC so if my attempt to write from the perspective of a WOC has accidentally included something problematic that I have not noticed, pls feel free to let me know.
> 
> Come talk to me [on tumblr](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/) [or twitter](https://twitter.com/paper_storm_) if you want!


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